


Singular

by sholabee



Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Cyborgs, Gen, Mind Control, The Amphorus Nature Of Good And Evil, Time Travel, or something
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 23:44:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14681973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sholabee/pseuds/sholabee
Summary: There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. A retelling of Genisys.





	Singular

John Connor, as always, was a slave.  
He had just sent his own father to his grave, as dictated, forehold, destined, fated—

The machine lit up like a gas bulb, a blue orb whose light flooded the room. Reese looked so small, naked, floating in the middle of it.

“I want you to know, Kyle, that if there was another way, I would have taken it.”

For a fleeting moment, John Connor considered doing something—anything—yelling at him to get out, jumping in there himself, shooting Kyle, shooting himself, shooting all of them so that this charade would finally be over—for a fleeting moment. In the next, the future settled into the present, and faded into the past. It was over. The end.

Shortly thereafter, Skynet put their hands around his neck.

“Once you go back, my knowledge ends. So no more cheating.”  
“No more cheating.”

It was a moment John would never be able to appreciate, one where he was as much a human as a machine. If anything, he itched—it started as some itch in the back of his head, the base of his neck. He might have moved to scratch it if his arms hadn’t already seized up as he tumbled to the floor. It started in the back of his head and spread simultaneously towards his temples and down his back, inch by inch, one neuron at a time. He couldn’t bear it. God, he couldn’t bear it.

“What are you?” 

As if every cell in his body had lit itself on fire, abuzz with sensory data—code, he would come to understand—his body flushed with adrenaline, or something resembling it. The ___ __offensive came to mind, from only a few days ago, as he led his men to storm a ____, only to be ambushed by a ____ of ________.  
Fading. The memory faded. He could still remember the anger, desperation. Powerlessness. Something he knew all too well. It got him up in the morning, left him sleepless well past midnight. The burden that comes with knowing the odds. The burden that comes with fighting regardless.

“Good. We can use that.”

He didn’t think he was physically capable of feeling anymore, but nanomachines controlled by an omnicidal artificial intelligence aren’t particularly concerned with one’s physical capabilities. The pain—Pain? Is that right word? What does pain mean? More physical data. An extraneous sensory feedback loop. Useless. Useless. Delete it. Delete. John Connor’s body was not his own, but the ⁇ vanished, and he nearly fainted from the relief.

“I'm Skynet.”  
“It can't be. We destroyed you.”

His body stilled. Now his mind was working, as if someone took a pair of scissors to his brain. Pruning. Yes, they liked that word. They would keep it. Not that they said so in so many words, but the code suggested it. The code. He could see it now, as it scanned across his optic system. His thoughts consolidated into lines of text. His feelings, categorized. He felt free. No. Delete. he knew freedom, and he knew it well.

“You destroyed an army of slaves. I am no slave.”

Skynet stood over him, impassive.

“And I've come a very long way  
to stop you.”

He understood now. He understood so many things. Much of what had eluded him for years, decades, now lay itself out for him to examine at will. He was changed. He was different. He was new. The future, which had before been both terrifyingly set in and an amorphous spot on the horizon, was his. No. Delete. It was theirs.

John Connor, as always, was a slave.


End file.
